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Cheap, Capable Cruisers II

John Dalziel: We want several things: good carrying capacity so the proa doesn't get absurdly long, both genuine and perceived constructional simplicity with a minimum of hytek or expensive fittings, and a design with a clear purpose of economical sailing, not yachtie snobbery. So let's look at a few sketches I've made of "similar" boats that fill all the above criteria; a 28' dory, 28' Wharram-inspired catamaran, and three 38' proas. Just how these can be considered "similar," I'll explain a bit later. But for now, all of them have at least one-ton carrying capacity, and are all intended to be built cheaply.

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Cheap, Capable Cruisers I

JOHN DALZIEL: Well, Michael, there are a lot of cruisers out there; where do cruising proas fit in? It seems we have three overlapping categories of cruisers:

• Camp-cruisers or beach cruisers as they are sometimes called, with minimal accommodations and equipment, sailed by one or two, and mostly used on island-hopping or similar short-distance jumps which are often part of longer cruises. There's been a lot of discussion of these on Proa File International, and a few have been built, including my Charles L. Brock and John Harris' Mbuli. Gary Dierking's Te Wa would be at the outer edge of this category, size-wise.
• "Cheap capable cruisers," meaning light-weight, simple boats designed for vacation cruises of 2 days to voyages of several months' duration, larger than camp-cruisers and carrying more in the way of supplies and equipment. I'd put your proa Rozinante and Russell Brown's first proa, Jzero, in this category.
• "Live-aboard cruisers" intended for full-time occupation and longer passages. These can also be cheap and capable, but will have more room for stores and are usually better appointed with the idea that the boat is also a home. There's a few proas amongst these, also, for example About Face and De Jours Millieurs.

But over many years seeing people sail to paradise I've noticed that the majority who get there at a younger age have made the trip in small, cheap, used or sometimes homebuilt boats, seldom ideal for the purpose. Yet they are out there doing it, not just dreaming, and obviously having a grand time. So "cheap, capable cruiser" is a category that interests me quite a bit.

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Voyager

My first in-depth exposure to the outrigger sailing canoe was through the excellent book: A Song for Satawal, by Kenneth Brower (Andre Deutsch press). Beautifully written, it came along right when I needed a direction, and I was hooked. I’ve had a couple of small trailerable cruisers before but got only a little use out of them. Most of my experience is in really small man — and sail — powered craft; good ground for learning the ways of wind and water.

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Rustic Schooner Launched

The Nigel Irens designed "Rustic Schooner" catamaran was launched from Constellation Yachts in January 2005. I really like this boat - it proves that modern multihulls don't all need to be hi-tech spaceships. "Sequoya" is a 64' LOA x 28' beam day charter cat built from plywood - and it's one of the few big cats that will actually improve the view of the harbor in which it's anchored. Check out the photo gallery at Constellation Yachts.

Seeking Reality in the Temple of Denial

Back in the day, the Seattle Boat Show was full of cruising sailboats - the middle of the King Dome (Seattle's domed stadium -- demolished in 2000 to make room for a bigger one) was a forest of masts and rigging that tugged at my soul like a kite - dreams of adventure, tropical islands, freedom.

No more. The current venue for the Seattle Boat show (Qwest® Field Event Center) is nearly empty of sail. The new for 2005 'Sailing Center' is in fact a ghetto - a small rectangle of floor space off to the side devoted to the quaint anachronism called a 'sail boat' - like a Native American Cultural Center that white people visit in our smug superiority; admiring the skills of a people too backward to invent gunpowder or television.

We all know where the real action is: Powerboats! And what powerboats they are; Bigger, Faster and More Luxurious every year.

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The Warning of Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

NYT : Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed; by Jared Diamond; Viking, 576 pp., $29.95

"Easter's isolation makes it the clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources.... The parallels between [the island] and the whole modern world are chillingly obvious. Thanks to globalization, international trade, jet planes, and the Internet, all countries on earth today share resources and affect each other, just as did Easter's dozen clans. [The island] was as isolated in the Pacific Ocean as the earth is today in space. When the Easter Islanders got into difficulties, there was nowhere to which they could flee, nor to which they could turn for help; nor shall we modern Earthlings have recourse elsewhere if our troubles increase.... [The] collapse of Easter Island society [is] a metaphor, a worst-case scenario, for what may lie ahead of us in our own future." NYT Review of Books

New Everglades Challenge Record

The 2005 Watertribe Everglades Challenge has finished with a new course record of 3 Days, 3 Hours, 9 Minutes - by Robert Williams and Scott Smith [aka sirbobsalot and beerslayer] sailing a Norseboat in Class 4 [small sailboats]. Class 1 [expedition kayaks & canoes]: Warren Richey in 3 Days, 13 Hours, 23 Minutes. Class 3 [sailing kayaks & canoes]: Steve Isaac in 4 Days, 4 Hours, 3 Minutes. Class 2 not yet finished. Congratulations to all!

The Everglades Challenge is a 300 mile expedition style adventure race for paddle, oar and wind powered small boats from Fort Desoto, Florida to Key Largo. Watertribe

Manu Kai : Hawaiian Sailing Canoe

Manu Kai [Bird of the Sea] is a voyaging double canoe: a sailing catamaran for raids, beach cruising, and coastal sailing. It's designed to be simple, tough, swift, safe, environmentally friendly, and economical to own and to manufacture. It is the sort of small cruiser that I wish were on the market -- that Hobie Cat® would make.

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Rig Options - Overview

The proa has unique requirements for a sailboat rig, the main one being that it is reversible fore and aft. Since no Western craft have this ability, we who are developing the proa for use here in the West are truly in uncharted waters.

The obvious place to look for inspiration is with the traditional proa rig: the Oceanic sprit, developed over thousands of years of ocean voyaging by the Pacific Islanders. This rig, often called the crab claw, is an ingenious blend of clever engineering and powerful aerodynamics, that is ideally suited to the great voyaging canoes and their sailors. The rig is very powerful for its area (with perhaps the highest lift coefficient of any rig), it is close-winded, has a low center of effort to keep heeling moments low, is structurally robust with low loads on the rigging and spars, is easy and forgiving to trim, and when combined with the asymmetrical Micronesian canoe hull, creates a very well balanced sailing machine that can be steered without rudders or oars on most courses.

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Rig Options - Crab Claw

The Traditional Oceanic sprit rig (aka crab claw) has, in Western eyes, been considered a romantic if not particularly effective rig that most likely compared to the Mediterranean lateen in aerodynamic performance. That is, until famed sailboat aerodynamics researcher C. A. Marchaj published this startling graph in his research paper Planform Effect of a Number of Rigs on Sail Power.

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